We’ll say that the thing on the sofa got up and helped you with the kitchen, the kids drove themselves to the store, (You don’t want to know what they were doing and buying, not really) and you arranged for all of the family to come and go without a single injury requiring a visit to the emergency room. You should be handling the Middle East problem!
Now the reality hits you, you stop, take a breath for the first time in two weeks and realize that all of those Christmas shows on Cable aren’t a programming mistake; it is less than a month until Christmas.
Now you have to grid up your loins, (I never really understood what girding was and why lions should be girded but that what they say you should do so let’s just play along and save some time for the hard part, the shopping.)and head out to face the music at Wally World.
Sure you are going to give art to the majority of your adult fiends, the ones who can understand and appreciate what real personal insight is all about, but what are you going to do about the people on your Christmas list who aren’t adults? You know, the kids, the guys, (Most guys don’t really grow up until around twenty-three and some of them have been known to stay twenty-three for five or ten years.), the ones who never made it to the maturing part of the course.
You’ll do what all panicked, last-minute shoppers have done for the last several years, since some creative genius came up with gift cards, you’ll buy gift cards. Yes, I know Suze Ormond says don’t do it and Clark Howard says don’t do it and probably even Elmo says don’t do it, but there comes a time to turn mother’s face to the wall, suck it up and admit that you just don’t have any more time.
Don’t you feel better now that that decision is made?
Of course there’s still one important issue to face, what do you say when everyone form your spouse to the mailman says, “What do you want for Christmas?”
The answer, crass as it is is the same, gift cards. I know as warm and fuzzy was socks and nearly as romantic as a root canal. But let’s face it, does anyone besides you actually know what you want and do you actually know most of the time?
No you don’t. It’s a hard thing to admit, but there it is, most of us haven’t a clue what we want or when we want it, we only know after we’ve seen someone else get it and think, “Now why didn’t I ask for that?”
And then there’s the understanding gap. As an artist you may just want something which a regular Joe hasn’t got a clue about and wouldn’t know where to look for it if they did and doesn’t understand what it is even after you have explained it to them.
Or, maybe it is something that any ole duck could understand but it was new five years ago and now there isn’t one anywhere in the world, except, Ebay. Okay, Craig’s List too but to get it you have to be able to pay for it online and they won’t take that ten gallon jar of pennies that you have been hoarding for just such an occasion.
So what do you do? (You know you don’t have to be forced into a box by wanting a unique or obsolete thingy, maybe you just want something that Amazon has and no one in Coos County does, but to get it you have to use a credit card and that is pretty scary these days with all of the cyber crime and identity theft. So…) You get a gift card.
Now Amazon makes that a pretty easy thing and you can get one for yourself, for your great aunt Mahatmja, or you can say, when the dreaded question is asked, “What do you want for Christmas?”
But maybe your goodie lives on eBay. Then you won’t be able to get it with an Amazon gift card. Try a prepaid Visa or Master Card. Sure they can be expensive and might be a rip-off and could eat up all of your money in fees, but that is why you buy the card at your bank.
Yes, they do and they’ll be happy to do it for you and they’ll charge you a whole bunch less than the ones you can get at Safeway or Freddie’s or Wally World. They’ll let you personalize them and give you gift envelopes and they’ll make it as easy as can be cause they’ll get to gouge the merchant when you use it.
And you will be able to get what you actually want instead of the lacy thing from Victoria’s Secrets which you’d get arrested if you ever wore it outside of the house not to mention putting the kids into shock if they saw it and you don’t even want to know what would happen if your adult children saw it cause all of them were born through immaculate conception and let’s not even think about what would happen if that ole thing on the couch opened the wrong package and got a good look and suffered a massive coronary.
So this year do the right thing and when you get asked The Question, say with a smile, “A gift card would be nice.”
Oh yeah, come back after the first of the year and I’ll tell you what you should think about using all those plastic goodies on.
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